My Cute Cowgirl

 The girls and I had so much fun exploring the fairgrounds this year at the Western Washington State Fair.

 Formerly known as the Puyallup Fair, there seemed to be a childhood memory waiting to be re-lived for me around every corner! I was ecstatic sharing all the goodness with Rainier and Sunday. After all, they don't know what corn dogs and BBQ corn on the cob, and earthquake burgers, elephant ears, curly fries, and caramel apples and SCONES taste like, so they weren't disappointed not to be offered any. And there was no way I could share or withhold such goodness, so I was able to resist somehow as well :-) It's a good thing I never saw a pickle barrel, though, that might have snagged me.

We got to see a lot of our favorite animals, including, a Camel! By the time I was ready to leave, we were all pretty pooped (how could we have only been there for three hours?!), but I managed to get one more photo shoot in, and my cute little cowgirl hopped up on the hay bale before she realized what the reason was for. She never has been into smiling on command! Or photographic eye contact either. Hence, I got none of her looking adorable-y at me, but did get an adorable shot nonetheless :-)

The map print background is by Studio Calico, and I got it in a kit from a Creating Keepsakes class about Mixed Media. The kit included a piece of dressmakers pattern paper, which could have been adhered with decoupage techniques. I chose to just use my regular favorite Red Duck adhesive down the sides and then grabbed a couple border strips for the top and bottom.

Once I had figured out how I wanted all my layers to go, I got stuck. This layout sat for about a month on my desk, I couldn't figure out just what it needed. With the additions of the border strips and my journaling last night, I finally feel like it can be put in the album.

Whew! I don't like it when an unfinished something keeps getting in my way of creating something new, but it's almost a feeling of relief once I have it completed! And who would have guessed that pattern paper can work with our beloved patterned papers! Not me...

now where are all those old patterns I'm not using... 

Here's another shot with the flash on, so you can see a little bit different view.